


One-Year Review

by shieldivarius



Series: Trouble. Capital "T" [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/F, Relationship Woes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 14:53:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1714586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldivarius/pseuds/shieldivarius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Natasha falls asleep at Melinda's one night, and they... just don't do that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One-Year Review

It was the middle of the night and Natasha stood alone on the range, her ears ringing in the echoing aftermath of the magazine she emptied into the head of the target at the end of her lane. She should’ve grabbed earmuffs, but without anyone present and riding her ass to make sure she was following the rules of the range, Natasha hadn’t even bothered. It had slipped her mind, really.

She retracted the target and yanked it down from the clip, crumpling it between her hands and chucking it in the nearest garbage can. Then she shut down the range and walked out, sticking her gun back into the holster at her waist.

She was going to fail her one-year review. She was going to fail and it wasn’t going to be because of the reason she might’ve thought, six months ago. S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn’t going to flunk her review because of some undercurrent of doubt in her loyalties, some assumption that she was playing the double agent and still reporting back to Russia.

They were going to flunk her because she was compromised and couldn’t focus, and because she was going to fail to pass her review. It would be her own goddamned fault.

One week. She had one more week to return herself to the mental fitness required to meet S.H.I.E.L.D.’s standards and pass the test. One week, and no distractions to bother her except for those of her own making, because she’d been promised that she would have this week to herself, no missions. 

This morning when she’d objected, Coulson glared at her and told her protocol stayed the same for all agents; she wasn’t getting special treatment. 

She’d left before he could ask her if she was avoiding anything. Or anyone.

Now footsteps joined her as she stalked down the Triskelion's corridors, lit only sparsely this long after-hours.

"Three am range sessions. Nice."

Barton. She didn't turn to greet him. She'd come down here to be alone, and his checking up on her was less than appreciated. How had he even known she was here?

"What's eating you?" he asked. "You've been quiet. And I thought I was the only one who hung out in dingy basements after hours."

"I'm still on Moscow time," she said. "Can't sleep."

"You don't get jet lag. Try again."

She pressed her lips together. It had been a bad choice of line for Clint.

"My review's in a week."

Clint caught up to her, hands shoved in the pockets of his sweatshirt. He stayed quiet for a minute, and she could feel the pressure of his gaze as he watched her. For her part, Natasha kept her eyes focused in front of her like the empty hallway in front of them was interesting.

"I know. I'm gettin' interviewed tomorrow."

 _That_ made her look over at him, eyes a little wide, and her heart sped up. Of course he was being interviewed, that made sense—he'd been her S.O., after all. She didn't know who else they might speak to, though, and she couldn't hold all of the variables in her hands if she didn't have all of the information.

It wasn't as though she advertised that she had been involved—was involved?—with another agent, but Clint and Coulson, and anyone they might reasonably decide to interview held that information. Hell, they might interview May herself, and wouldn't that be awkward.

"Hey, if I can pass my reviews, you sure as hell can."

She snorted.

"I'm serious."

“Why were you checking up on me?” she asked, because it was easier to avoid the subject than to entertain it. It was his turn to snort, the sound accompanied by a fidgety, uncomfortable rub of his hand across the back of his neck. 

"I’m worried about you. Gonna tell me what's got you spooked, now?"

"I'm fine."

She could practically hear him roll his eyes at that. Served him right for trying to pry, as though he'd be able to help her even if he knew the situation. She'd made her bed. She was prepared to lie in it. Stupid metaphor choice for her situation, but oddly appropriate.

Clint grabbed her elbow and turned her toward him. She let him do it, glaring at him even as he did and pulled far enough away that their height difference, for what little it was, didn’t matter. 

"What," she snapped.

“Pre-test jitters don’t seem like your style. And I know you.”

She pulled away at that. “You don’t know me,” she muttered. “You know what I’ve shown you.”

“I know you,” he repeated to her back as she stomped down the hall. He knew her well enough not to follow her after. She had to hand him that.

 

Natasha didn’t manage to sleep that night, but when morning came she dragged her ass down to the cafeteria anyway, finding Clint sitting at their usual table. She skipped over the choices of food in the breakfast line in favour of a large, steaming black cup of coffee. He gave the cup a pointed look when she slid into a chair across the table from him. She returned it in kind at the half-empty coffee in front of him, and no food in sight.

“So I was thinking,” he said, and tilted his chair back, propping his feet up on the chair next to her.

She gave him a sceptical lift of her eyebrow and sipped at her coffee. The fluid burned hot down her throat and into her chest. 

“You should get May to put you through your paces. She’s run reviews before.”

“I’m fairly certain that isn’t allowed,” Natasha replied. 

His expression darkened. “Something happen with you two?” 

He didn’t know, of course, because she refused to discuss anything about her arrangement with Melinda with him. That had left him free to make his own assumptions¬—another arrangement that was fine with her as long as he didn’t ask questions.

She hadn’t meant to tread this closely to the roving, wild concerns in her head, entangled in this conversation though they were.

“No, I just don’t think you should be condoning cheating. Or worse, suggesting it.”

“You’re a spy, sweetheart. They’re expecting it,” he said. Then he stood, taking both her coffee and his, and started walking away from the table so that she either had to let it go, or chase after him.

She chose to follow, because she was pretty sure why he’d decided to take off, and she didn’t want to have a _very embarrassing conversation_ in the middle of the canteen. 

“Talk.”

She grabbed her coffee back from him and kept her lips shut after taking a sip of it.

“Okay, so you broke up,” he said into the silence. “Sucks, I thought you’d hit it off pretty well.”

 _‘Broke up,’ ‘hit it off.’_ Natasha sighed and took the bait.

“What, exactly, did you think May and I were doing?”

At that he paused and turned his head to look at her, a confused, perturbed expression on his face, brow furrowed. “What?” he asked, and then shook his head, like he’d needed to play the words back through his mind before he could respond.

When he did, he hesitated before saying, “Dating?” Then he shook his head. “Not a good word for you. Uh, seeing each other?”

Her eyebrows twitched. 

“Nat, you told me you have—had—have? Feelings for her, so I didn’t—What, are you just screwing? Hooking up?”

She rolled her eyes. Maybe she should’ve been talking to him, if those were the conclusions he’d jumped to. Not that he’d be of any help to her anyway. 

“We were having sex, Barton,” she said, her voice quiet because this was a bad place to have this conversation, even if no one else was in the hall. “That’s it.”

“Yeah? And then what?”

She frowned at him, quickened her pace because they’d veered toward territory far too personal for open S.H.I.E.L.D. corridors. Natasha was fairly certain she’d been just unlucky enough lately for Melinda May to come walking around a corner when she was in the middle of saying something that made her sound particularly… attached.

“What do you mean _and then what?”_ she asked, stalling.

“You said ‘were.’”

Natasha shrugged. “We didn’t discuss it, it just happened,” she replied. 

And it had _just happened_ that she’d made a poor decision, gone to see Melinda after getting back from a three-week mission in Moscow, immediately after debrief instead of going to her own quarters to sleep off the job. Her body had demanded the sleep anyway and she and May… they didn’t do that. They didn’t do that at all.

“’Tash, that doesn’t make sense,” Clint said, and he sounded concerned. 

“What part lost you?”

“The beginning. Start over.”

Natasha stared him down, trying to figure out exactly what it was he wanted from her. He returned her stare with a patient look, brow a little furrowed out of concern.

“I don’t want to talk about this here,” she said finally. 

Barton swept his arm out in a gesture for her to lead them elsewhere. With a clenching feeling somewhere between her heart and stomach, Natasha did.

 

“I can’t afford to worry about this right now,” Natasha said as soon as the door to her quarters closed behind them. Barton leaned back against the door, his arms crossed. She stopped a couple of feet in front of him, staring him down, keeping her feet. 

“Emotional shit’ll fuck you up worse than anything else, Nat.”

There really wasn’t any point in continuing to dodge around the truth when he knew that she was doing it, and when he’d long started worrying at it like a dog with a bone.

“It wasn’t supposed to be emotional,” she replied, frustrated. 

Barton shrugged. “Not being in control sucks, huh?”

She frowned at him, any snide comment she might’ve had on the tip of her tongue evaporating at his sheer, pinpoint accuracy. Not that she hadn’t given him enough, at this point, for him to reach that conclusion but hearing it stated aloud threw her.

“I was in control,” she said, one last bit of slip sliding away from the topic at hand. “That’s the problem.” 

He raised an eyebrow at her, not looking convinced. “You keep talking in the past tense. Somethin’ happen in Moscow?” 

He looked wary, and she knew he was trying to figure out if he needed to worry about her having gone off the grid on yet another mission. She hadn’t, of course, but at this point she would take failing her review because of a poor, yet conscious, choice in the field over failing it because she’d become so emotionally compromised she couldn’t focus enough to make the right decision.

“Nothing happened in Moscow,” she muttered, and finally moved over to the bed and dropped down on it. “It was when I got back. I was… stupid. I should’ve debriefed and come back here to bed. I went to see Melinda instead.”

His eyebrow crept higher. 

“I fell asleep,” she muttered, embarrassed and staring at the bedspread. It sounded _stupid_ and on top of that, she knew he didn’t understand. That she hadn’t explained it well enough for him to understand, and explaining it well enough to allow him to understand was just more embarrassing conversation that she didn’t want to have. 

“Neither of you had stayed over before,” he said.

Natasha jerked her head up to stare at him in surprise and he shrugged.

“It’s not the end of the world, Nat. She say anything?”

It would be easier if she had. Things would probably be clearer if she had.

“She wasn’t there when I woke up.”

Barton crossed the room and sat down next to her. “Okay, see, this? This thing you’re dwelling on? This is going to fuck you up on your review.”

“I’m not _dwelling,_ ” she snapped.

“Look. There’ve been feelings involved from the start. Go talk to her.”

He stood and left, and at least if he was rolling his eyes at her, he didn’t let her see it.

 

Barton’s taking off when he did had more to do with him having to get to the interview for his part of her review, than anything else, but Natasha was still relieved that he took off when he did. That conversation couldn’t have gone much farther before she threw him against a wall for all the assumptions he’d been making. Even if he was perceptive.

He’d been right, too. She did need to go and talk to Melinda. She would. Once she had figured out what her feelings were well enough to put them into words, she would. In the meantime, she perched on the edge of her bed, palms flat on the blankets beside her, and closed her eyes. 

Re-compartmentalize. She had been trained better than this. She was better than this. Better than a fool who threw everything aside to worry about her relationship with a casual bed partner, even if Clint was right and she had had feelings for Melinda from the start.

Natasha opened her eyes and glanced at the clock on the little table next to her bed. Middle of the day, she certainly had better things to do than sit in her room. She should write up her mission report from Moscow, for one thing. She'd been granted an extension on the paperwork due to the immanent review, but putting it off didn't seem in the best interest of either her or S.H.I.E.L.D.'S files.

It was with a bit of a frustrated sigh that Natasha forced herself from her mattress and back out the door. Her half-written report shouldn't wait if it didn't have to.

 

Two nights later, there was a knock on Natasha’s door. She spared it a sceptical glance before returning to her stretches. Every once in a while another agent who lived on campus (never the same one twice), with no doubt altruistic motives, would come along and invite her along to a bar. She’d never accepted before and she lacked even the desire to answer the door and listen to the invitation tonight.

The knocking came again, like maybe she hadn’t heard it the first time despite the size of the standard issue room. Still stretching, Natasha spread her legs out to either side and lay her torso flat between them.

“Natasha?” 

She sat up, fast enough that she would’ve pulled something if she weren’t already warm. She would kill Barton if he’d gone and spoken to Melinda. 

“Hi,” she greeted, opening the door and standing back far enough to let the other woman pass. She was aware, even without the look that Melinda gave her, that her stillness might as well have been her screaming at Melinda that something was wrong. 

“Hi. Do you mind if I sit?” Melinda asked, her gaze analyzing Natasha, who indicated her permission with a tilt of her head toward the chair.

Natasha returned to her yoga mat and resumed her stretches. The room was silent for a few minutes, with Natasha ignoring Melinda until she’d finished what she was in the middle of, and Melinda respecting that she’d interrupted. Natasha couldn’t decide if it relaxed or unsettled her.

When she’d finished, and was in the middle of rolling up the mat to put it away, Melinda spoke. “I think we need to talk.”

Natasha looked over at her, keeping quiet but with a patient expression that invited Melinda to continue.

“I believe there’s a misunderstanding hanging between us, and I want to clear the air,” she said. She spoke slowly, deliberately, and Natasha could tell she’d rehearsed what she wanted to say. She’d done the same, but this didn’t seem like the time to try and dovetail into her own prepared speech.

"Misunderstanding?" Natasha prompted when there was a moment of extended silence between them. 

"You know the phrase 'Start as you mean to go on'?" Melinda asked.

Natasha gave her a polite, blank look. “I’m not sure I understand the relevance.”

The right corner of Melinda's lips turned up a little, and she gave a brief bow of her head that was almost coy. "I think we’ve developed a pattern neither of us planned for.”

Assuming either of them had planned for this at all. Natasha certainly hadn’t. She closed the cupboard door on the mat. “You’d have preferred it go differently, how?” 

The standard issue rooms on base weren’t very large, but by leaning her shoulder up against the door she’d just closed her mat away in, Natasha had inadvertently created the largest distance possible from Melinda in the small space. 

Melinda noticed, her gaze doing a quick sweep of the tiles on the floor between them before returning to Natasha. And Natasha could see the moment she rethought whatever it was she’d been planning on saying. “This is very a personal question,” she started, and Natasha’s eyebrows jumped up. “But, I promise it’s relevant to the topic at hand.

“What was your relationship with your ex-husband like?”

Natasha huffed a laugh. She’d been asked the same damn thing in mandated therapy at least three times since eliminating the Red Guardian, but the shrinks didn’t have the same motives that Melinda did.

“It was State-arranged,” she replied. “But we were both loyal, and it worked, until the State decided we had better places to be.” 

A fraction of a crease interrupted the skin between Melinda’s brows. Whatever answer she’d been looking for, Natasha hadn’t given it to her. Melinda’s expression shifted into something more concerned. 

“A spy couple seems a strange choice.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Natasha said without elaborating, and thinking of another man, and another time. She pushed off the cabinet, giving the clock on the table a pointed look. She had another therapy session in less than an hour, and anyway she didn’t understand why Melinda had come by. 

“Bad time?” 

Natasha gave a tiny shake of her head. “I have enough.” She perched on the edge of the bed. “To talk,” she added.

“That’s all I came here for,” Melinda said, her voice slow and careful.

“So you’ve said,” Natasha replied, because Melinda was starting to treat her like she might bolt, and Natasha’s emotions had felt erratic enough lately that she wasn’t sure she wouldn’t. “You’re not satisfied by our arrangement?”

Melinda blinked at her, and the motion was long and slow, contemplative. Natasha had said something Melinda wasn’t fond of.

“I believe that’s you,” Melinda said after a moment. Natasha tilted her head, hair sliding over her shoulder. “The one who isn’t satisfied,” she elaborated.

“This works for me, Melinda.”

Melinda looked down at her lap, quickly, and Natasha saw her hands clench together and her lips pull tight over her teeth in the instant before she looked back up. 

“Alright,” she said, and stood. “Then I apologize for keeping you.” She paused with her hand on the doorknob. “If you’d like to come by tonight, I’ll be free.”

She left, and Natasha frowned, blinking at the closed door to the room. 

 

If there had been any chance she might suddenly get called away for an op, briefing and leaving immediately, Natasha would have stayed in her own quarters that night. As it was, she knew there was almost no chance of protocol being broken and her being given a job before her review was finished. So she drove to Melinda’s, mind screaming the whole way that she’d made a bad choice, hands holding the steering wheel a little too tightly the entire drive over.

Nerves. She would admit that she was nervous. But the thrill of expectation shot through her too, alternating with the whispers of fear that their conversation earlier had stirred up more than settled down. She didn’t understand what Melinda wanted. It had almost sounded, when she’d broached things maybe not quite progressing as they ought, like she wanted something more.

Almost. 

But she’d also mentioned a misunderstanding, and she had certainly been talking about Natasha’s post-Moscow nap.

She didn’t know where she stood. She didn’t know where she stood and that, more than anything else, had created this rash of nerves within her. Natasha never had a problem finding her footing, and she always knew where she stood—with her employer, with a target on a job, even with random passersby on the street. To be here now, almost floundering in her own social life, and not knowing where she stood with Melinda May was bogging her down and affecting her in ways she couldn’t handle. 

That, in itself, was the real reason she was driving out to Melinda’s tonight. She’d been offered a chance to lay this all to rest: her nerves, her uncertainties, all of it. If she didn’t take that chance because of some fear he couldn’t overcome, then she deserved to fail the review at the end of this week.

She buzzed up to Melinda’s apartment. Waited, shifting from foot to foot and unable to look at her reflection in any of the three mirrored walls of the elevator as it struggled up the five floors to her destination. Slipped between the doors on the fifth floor before they’d fully opened.

Rapped on 502 in front of her, the scent of cat urine hitting her nose from the apartment of the alcoholic across the hall who couldn’t control (or manage to clean up after) his damn animal. The smell had been stronger, fresher, a couple of nights ago, but it always lingered around in some capacity.

She heard footsteps and then the chain scraped on the other side of the door. 

"Hi," she said as the door opened and Melinda stepped back to let her in. Her arms felt empty all of a sudden, like she should've brought a bottle of wine or something for them to share.

Melinda nodded and her lips pulled up at the corners in a tight smile but there was a gentleness to the guarded look in her eyes. She gestured for Natasha to take a seat in the living room as she closed the door, sliding the chain back into place and flipping shut the dead bolt.

A tiny little one-bedroom apartment, the kitchen and living room flowed together, divided by a peninsula with two bar stools tucked in under the lip of the counter. Natasha tugged one of the stools out far enough to perch on the edge of it, dropping her purse between the legs underneath. 

At the counter, Melinda pulled out two glasses and a pitcher of water from the fridge. 

“Not offering anything stronger?” Natasha asked, watching the water level rise as the glasses were filled.

“Maybe later.”

Natasha smiled and took the glass offered to her, taking a sip from it that left a bright lipstick print on the edge. Melinda rested her elbows on the counter and rested her chin on stacked hands, not touching her own water and instead looking at Natasha intently. Natasha met the steady gaze.

"Whatever you want to say, you can say it," she said.

Melinda broke her tableau at that. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

Blunt and to the point, and a weight off her chest that they’d finally be addressing this, but Natasha raised an eyebrow anyway. “I’ve been busy. My review is this week.” 

Outright denying that she’d been avoiding Melinda would be a lie, and this wasn’t the time for it. Melinda, though, hadn’t exactly made herself available or come looking, though, at least not until today, so the fault wasn’t all at Natasha’s feet. 

“Natasha,” Melinda said, and her voice was heavy and serious. “We need to stop dancing around the point. I am _flattered_ that you feel safe enough here to fall asleep and as deeply as you did.”

She’d picked up her glass again to hide any immediate reaction she might have to Melinda’s words. It worked, the weight of the glass in her hand, and the cool perspiration against her hand reminding her where she was and that yes, this was real.

“Flattered,” she repeated.

Melinda smiled. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up. I slipped out to think and got called away.”

Natasha let her face go blank for a long moment, studying Melinda’s countenance and trying to slot this revelation into the impressions she’d been entertaining for the past couple of days.

“I prefer base,” she said finally. Melinda’s lips quirked up at the corners and she continued. “But your security works for me.”

“Thank you for that,” was the droll response.

Silence stretched between them for a moment, and for the first time this week it was almost as quiet in Natasha’s mind as it was in the room. 

“Where does this leave us?” she asked.

Melinda, who’d been in the middle of a long drink of water when Natasha spoke, set the glass down again. “Let’s leave it at not scrambling in the dark or squinting after clothes before driving home at two o’clock in the morning a couple of nights a week.”

Natasha laughed, full and real and it drew a smile from Melinda. “I can work with that.”

 

She passed her review. At least, she figured she did. The results would come in soon, hand-delivered by Coulson, but he hadn’t come serving a subpoena or arrest warrant yet, so she suspected S.H.I.E.L.D. was keeping her. 

“Patched things up with May?” Barton asked, jumping down the staircase she’d just descended and landing hard behind her.

“Not that it’s any of your business.”

He snorted, loud and hard and echoing. “You were sulking and nervous and jittery and you had this long far off look in your eye like you didn’t know what to do with yourself.”

“You’re exaggerating,” she said, looking at the ceiling in exasperation.

“Am I? Did you look in a mirror last week?”

She jabbed him in the side with her elbow. She knew, knew, that he was spouting hyperbole but he’d hit hard on where she’d been last week—missing out on the frustration, of course. That she might appear that differently now was probably very telling.

He wrapped his arm around her shoulders in retaliation and pulled her against him. 

“I’m happy,” she admitted, so quiet she hardly gave voice to the words.

He squeezed her tighter.

**Author's Note:**

> http://shieldivarius.tumblr.com

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] One-Year Review](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808215) by [knight_tracer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer)




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